KZBlog

Nursultan Nazarbayev, speaking Monday at the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, expressed the hope that the new generation of schoolchildren will be 100% Kazakh speaking:

We would like 100% of those who will start learning Kazakh language in the first class to be able to speak Kazakh. I am sure this will happen,” Nazarbayev said at a meeting of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan.
He emphasized that over 80 percent of the residents of the country should be able to speak the national language by 2017.
“The knowledge of Kazakh language is not just a sound bite, it means that the people will also know the history of our country, the history of the Kazakh people…This will help consolidate the people of Kazakhstan and boost mutual confidence day after day.

At the same time he acknowledged some of the issues of going too fast, citing the problem of clinics and hospitals where signs are all in Kazakh, making it impossible for non-Kazakh speakers to find doctors and treatment rooms:

People come to a new clinic. And there all the signs in the doctors’ offices are in the Kazakh language only – from overenthusiastic officials from the Ministry of Health. So patients walk around as if in a labyrinth and don’t know how to get to the right doctor

He acknowledged that the goal of increasing the percent of the population that speaks Kazakh was better served by educating the young generation, rather than taxing the older generation with learning or relearing a new language. This seems like a reasonable approach to avoid alienating Russians, Ukrainians and other ethnicities who have lived their whole lives in Kazakhstan, while at the same time promoting the state language.